Coffee Klatch

I‘ve been a fan of Sudoku for quite a while now. While searching my blog for references, I found THREE different posts about Sudoku: 20 March 2006, 27 December 2006, and 9 March 2007. Lately I decided to look for a site that I would track my progress–if not actual puzzles solved, then points earned by the number of puzzles I’ve solved at each difficulty level. I’d found one before, but found it too cumbersome to navigate to new puzzles that I hadn’t solved yet, so I started looking around for a better site.

My favorite: Sudoku Kingdom. It has an interface that’s easy to work with (although I’d like it if they allowed using the Arrow keys to switch between boxes) and if you enter a number that’s already in that row/column/box, the existing number’s box flashes red a few times, alerting you to the conflict. Every month they reset the standings, so you can see who’s in the Top Ten for points (1-easy, 2-medium, 4-hard, 8-very hard). At the end of each month, every player who has at least 100 points is entered into a drawing for one of five e-books with 48 sudoku puzzles (with answers).

They have the regular collection of sudoku puzzles, which you can solve to your heart’s content. They also have Daily Sudoku, which gives you one point for each one you solve. Each puzzle is only available for two days (in case you miss a day, you can still get your puzzle done the next day). The Daily Sudoku has its own Top Ten list and its own monthly drawing (for 3 people who got at least 20 points that month). As a perk to keep you coming back, you get TWO points if you’ve solved the daily puzzle the day before. If you miss a day, though, then it goes back to one point until you do two days in a row.

If you’re more into solving Sudoku puzzles on paper, they keep the last twenty daily puzzles (plus solutions) available for downloading and printing. And if you’re new, there’s a Tutorial and a Beginners section which has its own Top Ten list, too (no drawing, though).

And to add a little something to the puzzle-solving process, they’ve got a Web Browser Toolbar (for Firefox AND Internet Explorer) that you can install, which allows you to listen to the radio or podcasts while you’re solving. Or even while you’re just online, since you can use the toolbar to share favorite links and jump right to sudoku puzzles with the click of a button.

Current music: Paint the Sky with Stars–The Best of Enya

This morning I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition that the average computer keyboard has more germs on it than a toilet seat! BLEH!!

So they talked about ways to clean a keyboard, including a story that’s going around the internet about using a DISHWASHER! (Bottom line people have tried it, sometimes it doesn’t hurt the keyboard, sometimes shorts start occurring which results in keys not work. Manufacturers say it’s not a good idea. Unless they’re someone like Seal Shield which designs the keyboards to be dishwasher safe.)

Read or listen to the story here.

If you’re interested in learning any more about rum, here’s a good overview of the various regions where rum is produced and what the quality is like (provided by Tastings.com’s “All About Rum“). For what it’s worth.

The Caribbean is the epicenter of world Rum production. Virtually every major island group produces its own distinct Rum style.

Barbados produces light, sweetish Rums from both pot and column stills. Rum distillation began here and the Mount Gay Distillery, dating from 1663, is probably the oldest operating Rum producer in the world.

Cuba produces light-bodied, crisp, clean Rums from column stills. It is currently illegal to ship Cuban Rums into the United States.

The Dominican Republic is notable for its full-bodied, aged Rums from column stills.

Guyana is justly famous for its rich, heavy Demerara Rums, named for a local river, which are produced from both pot and column stills. Demerara Rums can be aged for extended periods (25-year-old varieties are on the market) and are frequently used for blending with lighter Rums from other regions. Neighboring Surinam and French Guyana produce similar full-bodied Rums.

Haiti follows the French tradition of heavier Rums that are double-distilled in pot stills and aged in oak casks for three or more years to produce full-flavored, exceptionally smooth- tasting Rums. Haiti also still has an extensive underground moonshine industry that supplies the voodoo religious ritual trade.

Jamaica is well known for its rich, aromatic Rums, most of which are produced in pot stills. Jamaica has official classifications of Rum, ranging from light to very full-flavored. Jamaican Rums are extensively used for blending.

Martinique is a French island with the largest number of distilleries in the Eastern Caribbean. Both pot and column stills are used. As on other French islands such as Guadeloupe, both rhum agricole (made from sugar cane juice) and rhum industriel (made from molasses) are produced. These Rums are frequently aged in used French brandy casks for a minimum of three years. Rhum vieux (aged Rum) is frequently compared to high-quality French brandies.

Puerto Rico is known primarily for light, very dry Rums from column stills. All white Puerto Rican Rums must, by law, be aged a minimum of one year while dark Rums must be aged three years.

Trinidad produces mainly light Rums from column stills and has an extensive export trade.

The Virgin Islands, which are divided between the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Island. Only the US Virgin Islands still produce Rum, predominately making light, mixing rums from column stills, although there are some fine dark and aged sipping Rums made by the most significant producer Cruzan. These Rums, and those of nearby Grenada, also serve as the base for bay Rum, a classic aftershave lotion.

Guatemala and Nicaragua are noteworthy in Central America where a variety of primarily medium-bodied Rums from column stills that lend themselves well to aging. They have recently begun to gain international recognition

Brazil produces vast quantities of mostly light Rums from column stills with unaged cane spirit called Cachaça (ca·sha·sa) the best-known example.

Venezuela makes a number of well-respected barrel-aged golden and dark Rums.

The United States has a handful of Rum distilleries in the south, producing a range of light and medium-bodied Rums that are generally marketed with Caribbean-themed names.

Canada’s 300-year-old tradition of trading Rum for dried cod fish continues in the Atlantic Maritime provinces of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where golden Rums from Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica are imported and aged for five years. The resulting hearty Rum is known locally as Screech.

Europe is primarily a blender of imported Rums. Both the United Kingdom and France import Rums from their former colonies in the Caribbean for aging and bottling. Heavy, dark Jamaican Rums are imported into Germany and mixed with neutral spirit at a 1:19 ratio to produce Rum verschnitt. A similar product in Austria is called Inlander Rum.

Australia produces a substantial amount of white and golden Rums in a double- distillation method utilizing both column and pot stills. Rum is the second most popular alcoholic beverage in the country after beer. Light Rums are also produced on some of the islands in the South Pacific such as Tahiti.

Asia Rums tend to follow regional sugar cane production, with white and golden Rums from column stills being produced primarily in the Philippines and Thailand.

I‘m trying something new in my sidebar. It’s called AutoRoll and it’s a “widget” that you put on your blog and it displays links to other participating blogs that have similar topics to this one.

What is AutoRoll?
AutoRoll is a blog widget that displays links to blogs that your readers should like. Based on each unique reader’s affinity for each specific blog, the Criteo Recommendation Engine will compute on a real-time basis the relative affinity of all blogs, and it automatically displays the Top 10 unique links on each blog.

How does AutoRoll work?
We trace the number of visits of each unique reader on every blog that has installed AutoRoll. This is achieved through a cookie and requires no action from the reader.
This information is then fed to the Criteo Recommendation Engine, which computes blog affinities in real-time. The more often a reader visits a specific blog, the greater his affinity is with that blog. The exact affinity formula is kept secret to prevent any form of abuse. Using the Criteo Predictive Engine, we determine and display for any given blog its instant relative affinity with all other blogs that have installed AutoRoll.

It will take a few days for those links to start looking more relevant to you, but it will help if you spread the word and even sign up your own blog for the AutoRoll. It’s free and helps point your readers to other blogs that they would enjoy. It also provide you with some additional stats that you may not pick up in other ways. It’s very easy to install, too!

So I was wondering the other day about how rum is made. Obviously it’s fermented and distilled, but what’s the core ingredient? You probably already know.

It’s not corn or rice. Not even honey, but that’s getting closer. It’s sugar! More specifically, it’s molasses. When sugar cane is juiced and boiled, you can take out crystallized sugar. The sticky residue that’s left is molasses. They ferment it, distill it, and then age it for different lengths of time.

This explains why rum is THE spirit of choice in the Caribbean–that’s one of the main places in the world that grows sugar cane. (There are many other places (see this map), but the Caribbean is one of the most famous.)

So there you go. You probably already knew all this, or would if you thought about it for a minute. I chose not to think but to Google. Just like so many college students today!
Current music: Steel Band Music of the Caribbean

I was listening to Car Talk this weekend and a caller had a question about getting different gas mileage when she drove the same car on the same city streets than what her fiancé got. So they started talking about driving habits and shifting and all that (it was a manual transmission). Here are some of the conclusions they came to:

• Downshifting when slowing down for a stop (shifting from 4th to 3rd to 2nd to 1st) is unnecessary. In fact, it might save the brakes but it will wear out the transmission faster (which is much more expensive).
• Your gas mileage will change the most (with a stick-shift) based on how fast or slowly you shift.
• The longer you wait to shift, the higher rpm the engine is doing and so the more gas you use.
• For best results, you should upshift as early as possible.

So there you have it. Advice from the experts. If you want to save gas and you drive a manual, don’t wait for the engine to get higher or louder before shifting. Continually upshift as early as you can in the acceleration process. If you think about it, that’s typically what automatics do anyway. By shifting up each time as soon as your engine allows for it, you slow down the rpm and you burn less gas.

For samples and highlights of their radio show, automotive news, crash test scores, buying/selling help, and much more, visit cartalk.com. While you’re there, make sure you visit Time Kill Central.

So, a couple weeks ago I blogged about the gas prices going up right before Memorial Day and the Indy 500 race weekend when thousands more cars are in the city. I also said I’d report on what happened afterwards. So here’s the scoop.

The prices went up twice by about 30 cents each time the week before the race. Since then, it’s gone down. Not dramatically, so it wouldn’t be obvious (in my opinion), but it’s been a little over a week since the race and the prices are averaging $3.15 a gallon, which is 44 cents lower than it was on the weekend of the Big Race. It dropped by about 20 cents in small increments over the five days after the race and it’s continued to drop a few cents a day since then.

I can’t say for sure what’s going behind the scenes with the costs of oil and all that, but I DO know that the week BEFORE the Indy 500 gas prices jumped a total of about 60 cents and the week and a half AFTER the race the prices have fallen by three quarters of that.

Conspiracy? Gouging? Sheer coincidence? We may never know.

Current music: ZZ Top - Greatest Hits

So this weekend I was so busy I didn’t get to blog. GASP!! Saturday was our Board Meeting for the Circle City Ringers and Sunday we had a concert in Lincoln, Illinois. So driving there and back (about 3.5 - 4 hours) and then all the stuff going on there made it a full day.

Then Monday I was up early to drive to Cincinnati for a committee meeting that was a day-long event. I was invited to be a part of a new committee serving the Executive Director of AGEHR, the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers, which is the lead organization in the country for people involved with handbells. She’s formed a new advisory committee on community and professional handbell ensembles. There are four of us on the committee, working with the Executive Director to find ways that the Guild can incorporate and serve community groups better. It’s quite an honor to serve on this committee–especially since two of the members are directors of some of the top handbell ensembles in the country: The Raleigh Ringers and Embellish.

So busy weekend and my excuse for not writing more over the last few days.
FWIW.

Current music: The King’s Delight: 17th Century Ballads for Voice & Violin Band, performed by The King’s Noyse